So, I’ve not done a Throwback Thursday post in a while, and I recently thought about the fact that I did a lot of compressed reviews (compressed to the 2000 character limit of Instagram captions) before I started the blog. And since this blog is supposed to be a resource for builders, it would be nice to have those on here, and more accessible. But I had hesitated, wanting to rewrite some of the more interesting ones, and just feature those. I’ve changed my mind. I’m just going to copy the contents of the caption and re-post here, so that it can be available. Even if it’s not as helpful as a rewritten review, complete with explanatory graphics, at least it’s something? Some words on the build, and some pictures. And I dug way back for this one. Originally posted to Instagram 94 weeks ago!

#Piececool build 8 is complete! This gorgeous interpretation of the Temple of Heaven is a delight to behold. The choice to make the roof sections that way, rather than solid, was brilliant. And the brass metal looks stunning, even if it messed up my knolling efforts.

And it definitely goes up high on the list of challenging builds. Each one of the roof “slats” has a tab on the end of it, so the job of aligning them all into the slots of the disc beneath makes this model the clear winner for the most tabs aligned at once for a single join/step (at least if all the models I’ve built so far). Though they are not nearly as frustrating as Threepio’s head, because they don’t resist the alignment nearly as much.

In fact, the hardest part of this build was not the roofs, but the stairs! At least for me. My wife even commented, “you seem to be having a lot of trouble with this one,” while I was working on them. And I was. So many steps attached through the rails instead of the slots, several sets of steps folded backwards at first, one set of steps breaking apart as I inverted the folds, having to undo alignment tabs because I noticed another set of steps attached through the rails instead of the slots only after attaching the assembly to it’s base… It was a rough night.